Interview with Christina E. Pilz, Author of Fagin's Boy (Review)

Five years after Fagin was hanged in Newgate,
Oliver Twist, at the age of seventeen, is a young man of good breeding and fine
manners, living a quiet life in a corner of London. When Oliver loses his
protector and guardian, he is able, with the help of Mr. Brownlow’s friends, to
find employment in a well-respected haberdashery in Soho.

However, in the midst of these changes, Jack
Dawkins, also known as the Artful Dodger, arrives in London, freshly returned
from being deported. Oliver’s own inability to let go of his past, as well as
his renewed and intimate acquaintance with Jack, will take him back to the life he
thought he’d left behind.

Review

If you think that writing your first book as the sequel to a timeless masterpiece could be an exceedingly ambitious project, bound to poorly compare with the magnitude of a nineteenth-century master storyteller, you obviously have never heard of Christina E. Pilz, newcomer author of historical fiction. Newcomer she may be, but I honestly think you will hardly find a better way to revisit a Dickens classic other than reading Pilz's debut novel, Fagin's Boy. If you are familiar with the extraordinary British novelist and his work, chances are you will be genuinely enthralled by Pilz's ability to breathe new life into an iconic character of the Victorian realism. In her extremely well-executed novel, the author re-imagines, with exquisite richness of historical details, and penetrating understanding of character and social biases, the young adult life of Oliver Twist. The angel-face workhouse orphan, who refused to let his humble and troubled beginnings define his future, returns in Fagin's Boy to build new bridges and rehash old demons. The resolution of this riveting and vividly drawn tale will blow you away. Highly recommended.

***Review copy graciously offered by the author in return for an unbiased and honest opinion.

Interview

Welcome to Mina's
Bookshelf, Christina. I have thoroughly enjoyed your novel. Such a splendid and
well-crafted book for an author quite new on the published scene! What is your
background? Can you tell us something about yourself and what inspired you to write
fiction?

Thank
you for the compliment about my book; I wrote it as well as I knew how.

I
wanted to be a writer since the 4th grade. My teacher, Mrs. Harr
assigned her class a story writing project based on different pictures; the picture
I selected was from the back of a Reader’s Digest; it was the picture of a boy
and a girl flying a kite and a bear in the woods. In the story, the boy and the girl lose the
kite, and go into the woods to rescue it. The bear comes after them, but they are able
to escape. The moral of the story (I put in a moral because I was a very
serious nine year old child) was that you shouldn’t go into dangerous places
like the woods.

Mrs.
Harr wrote on the story and said, “This is a really good story, I really like
your ending.” Then she put a smiley face next to her comment. It was like
getting a shot of adrenaline. I thought, hey,
I can do this! So I began to write. A lot. At the same time, I had no idea
what writing was about, and for years didn’t know what a sentence fragment was,
among other things, but I began as I meant to go on. I wrote little bits of
stories and plays, took a stab at poetry, found inspiration in Star Trek and Dark Shadows, and kept writing, and the stories got longer.

Then
in 7th grade, my English teacher Mrs. Meyerlie wrote a letter home to my
parents. She commented that I had creative writing talent and should be
encouraged to continue. Whether my parents read the letter or not, I have no
idea; they never mentioned it to me. I think I came across the letter, one day,
sitting on the kitchen counter, and I was amazed at it. That this person, my
teacher, wrote to my parents to say that I was good at something, it was like a
bolt of lightning out of the blue. I still have that letter, pasted in a
scrapbook.

After
high school, I attended one college after another, where I took as many
literary-minded classes as my schedule would allow. I took a lot of poetry up
at UNC in Colorado; this amazing serious of classes was taught by Professor
Dougherty, and I took every class of his that I could: Intro to Poetry,
Advanced Poetry, Writing Poetry I, II, III, a Seminar on William Blake….and on
it goes. I was quite a blue stocking as
far as poetry goes, and I think that it had an impact on my writing style.

Fagin's Boy is a sort of
sequel to a classic masterpiece (Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens) and features
one of the most beloved literary darlings. Why Dickens? Why Oliver Twist? Those
are pretty big shoes to fill...

I
saw the movie Oliver! in 1969. I was
seven years old and I remember connecting with the character of Oliver Twist. He
was alone and adrift from anyone who had his interests in mind. He went through
a lot of hard times, and yet, in the end, he found a home in the world. Plus,
Mark Lester (the actor who played Oliver) was so cute, I adored him, simply adored him. I wanted to marry him!

Several
years passed before I realized that the movie Oliver! was based on an actual book. When I read the book in Junior
High, boy, was I surprised to find that Dickens was a bit of a slog to read;
the writing style was so different from what I was used to. And I was shocked to find out that a) Fagin gets
hanged at the end of the novel, and b) that Jack is harrested (as they say) for a two-penny, half-penny snuffbox, and
is simply and unequivocally never seen nor heard from again.

For
years, I wondered why had the story ended the way that it did? Why did Dick
have to die? Where did Jack go? And, most importantly, why did ever single
review I ever read about the book have at least one paragraph about what a
two-dimensional milksop of a character Oliver was?

I
blame Dickens, as he was sloppy with his character development here; Oliver has
no kind upbringing, yet he’s a thoughtful, gentle boy who has perfect diction. However,
as I read the book, and re-read the book, I began to feel that the milksop
description of Oliver was somewhat off the mark than you might think, in spite
of Dickens.

Take
the ur-scene, where Oliver asks for more. I don’t think there’s anyone on the
planet who does not know this scene. Oliver takes a dare that has his knees
shaking, and yet he goes up and asks for more, in front of Mr. Bumble and
everyone. As punishment for his audacious behavior, he’s locked in a dark room
for two weeks. He subsists on bread and water only. He is taken out every day
to be flogged in front of the entire workhouse. He wraps his arms around his
head and refuses to cry.

Then
there is the scene where Oliver is about to be apprenticed to the chimney sweep
dude, Mr. Gamfield. Oliver quickly sees that being a chimney sweep is not a
good choice, so he is able to convince several people who are insistent that he
does go with Mr. Gamfield that he should not go with Mr. Gamfield. Keep in
mind, that this is a 10 year old boy who is disagreeing with a) two
magistrates, b) Mr. Gamfield, and c) (last but not least) Mr. Bumble himself.

Then
there is the pivotal scene where Oliver has had enough of Noah Claypole’s abuse
(at Sowerberry’s coffin shop), and he rises up, the lion in his breast. He
attacks Noah hard enough to send the older boy crashing to the ground. Then
this small boy walks 70 miles to London to make his fortune.

When
Oliver meets up with Jack in Barnet, he hears about a “kindly old gentleman,”
aka Fagin. Oliver, in short order, resolves to himself that he will, in time
make this particular gentleman’s acquaintance, and, at the same time, usurp
Jack’s place. Oliver is all of 10 years old, for crying out loud, but his first
plan is how to manipulate the situation to his own advantage.

Are
these the actions of a milksop? I think not. That’s what stuck with me, and
part of why I wanted to write Fagin’s Boy.
Oliver is an underappreciated character, and I thought he deserved to have his
story told. I never thought about filling big shoes, though I was very
concerned with getting it right. I’ve got some trepidation that a Dickens
expert will soon find me and upbraid me for my audacious behavior as well as
point out all the mistakes that I’ve made.

Then
of course, there’s Jack. Oh my, Jack. He’s such a clever lad, the second he
claps eyes on Oliver, he knows that Oliver is easily led astray; hunger will do
that to you. The first thing he does is to feed Oliver, and promise him
shelter. He’s kind, in his way, and attentive to Olive; Jack is frequently petting
Oliver’s hair, or eyeing him and making comments about him. Frankly, if Oliver
is in the same room as Jack, then Jack is riveted by him.

There’s
one scene where Oliver is on his knees polishing Jack’s boots. Already this is
a provocative image, but then Jack ramps up the wattage by saying: Pity he isn’t a prig. The common British
definition conveys the more obvious meaning in Jack’s statement: a prig is a
petty thief or pickpocket. Used this way, Jack’s statement expresses his
disappointment that Oliver is not a thief by nature; something that Fagin
refused to see, but which is implied here that Jack knew all along.

However,
through my research I discovered that the term prig has sexual connotations;
saying someone is a prig is practically equivalent of calling someone a rent
boy. Which made a whole lot of sense to me; there’s no way that Jack would
actually know that Oliver would make a good thief, after all. Then combined
with Oliver in that particular position on the floor, and the alternate meaning
of prig, well, the scene took on a whole new meaning. I remember looking up
from the book at that point and thinking, Now,
wait a minute—is Dickens saying what I think he’s saying? That idea, that
alternate meaning, planted a seed in my brain that simply would not go away.

Let's talk about
character development. Did you originally intend to remain consistent with your
source of inspiration when you outlined the psychological arc of each
character?

To
me characters are the backbone of any story; I can’t get involved in a book,
movie, or TV show if I can’t relate to a character somehow. They don’t have to
always be nice or perfect, but I need to be able to relate to them, to connect.

To
that end, remaining consistent with Oliver Twist from the canon source was very
important to me. Even when I was young, something about this character, about
his story, resonated with me. There are
events in Oliver Twist that made me want to think more about him, and to find
those traits that demonstrated the complexities of this character; I have long grown
tired of comments that write him off as a two-dimensional boy who has no real
effect on the plot of his own life story.

I
love this character, so much, that I had to make him a bit of a jerk to be
believable. I wanted to give show those personality traits that would present
him as a real human being, and not a metaphor for goodness. So, I looked at him
from as many angles as I could to find those traits and build on them.

For
example, one pivotal scene in the original book was where Oliver beats the
stuffing out of Noah Claypole. I turned Oliver’s
ability to beat up a bigger kid into a flash paper temper. Anyone might think that Oliver was this tame
housecat, but if you cross him, he will mess you up. Mention his mother in
anything but glowing terms? He will try and kill you. (The latter of which is
actually canon; this is the reason he attacks Noah.)

In
the original book, Fagin gives Oliver at least one tumbler of gin and sugar, if
not more. From that, I determined that Oliver had a taste for the gin. And when he drinks, different things happen.
If he’s in a dark mood, he could probably find a bar fight to get into. If he’s
morose (which is very likely), he might want to sing sad songs. I developed the
idea that Jack recognizes early on that Oliver is fairly malleable and relaxed
when he drinks, at least when Jack is in the room. So I have Jack purposefully and
frequently feeding Oliver gin and water and sugar. In the next book, Oliver and Jack, I hope to develop this
idea even further; I’m going to write at least one of these scenes from Jack’s
point of view and show him doing it on purpose. Right now, Oliver doesn’t have
a clue.

One
part of Oliver that was very fun to work with was his fussy nature; in the
original book, he’s not keen on the filth and the darkness in his life. I
turned that into him being particular about having enough soap and hot water,
which I take as a reaction to the memory of 9 or so years being coated in
grime. (And also, he’s somewhat afraid of the dark; though this didn’t turn out
to be as important as I had originally thought.)

Because
he was such a starving orphan for so long, Oliver loves his food and will eat
pretty much anything; a good cook will gain his affection forever. This is based
on his memory of 9 or so years of near-starvation. If you’ve ever gone hungry,
food is the last thing you would take for granted. But it makes you difficult to be around,
particularly if the food isn’t up to your standards. Ever go to a restaurant
with a foodie, a restaurant that you particularly liked? You’re all stoked to
have your food-conscious friend enjoy the things on the menu that you want to
share. But the foodie, after the first bite, goes, hmmmmm, this isn’t very good. Wouldn’t you just want to scream at
that point? Well, Oliver is the biggest foodie ever; the only thing he won’t
eat willingly is eels. I aim to make him have to eat eels in the next book,
just to get mess with him.

To
me, my characters are real. I can’t have favorites because I know that if I
said my favorite was Jack that Oliver
would find out and it would break his heart. In contrast, if I said Oliver and Jack found out, Jack would
just laugh. He’s got enough self-confidence to be completely unaffected by what
I think of him. Anyway, since I do care about both Oliver and Jack, but in
different ways (I decided this, just now) I’ve determined that I want Oliver to
come into himself. To step forward, not just as the romantic, dashing figure
he’d like to see himself as, but as someone who is true to himself without
tying himself in knots about it. Thing is, Jack already knows this about
Oliver, and he’s patient enough to see Oliver through until he gets there.

Which character was easier for you to
write and which one was more challenging to adapt to your storyline?

I like to write Oliver when I’m in a composed and
erudite mood; I like to write Jack when things are a bit more jumbled. But that
is a very sneaky question to ask! I’m not supposed to have favorites! Oliver was more difficult to write because
he was the more central character; I was concerned, as I have said, with
getting it right, with making Oliver realistic. And, I think, I was so close to
the character that I had a hard time being objective about who he was. I
remember spending a great deal of time thinking about him, what he liked and
did not like, his foibles, and both the dark and light sides of his
personality.

Frankly, Fagin’s
Boy was supposed to have two points-of-view, both Oliver’s and Jack’s. But
when I would write a scene that came from Jack’s point-of-view, the story would
go down this odd, fascinating rabbit hole and Jack’s story would take over
Oliver’s story. I think that might be because I’d been in Oliver’s head for so
long, that Jack’s story felt newer to me, and more stimulating, so his
character was sometimes easier to write.

But I didn’t want to spend time writing about
what Jack was doing when he wasn’t with Oliver. (While Oliver is working at the
haberdashery, Jack is off stealing things.) Jack’s world is complicatedly
different form Oliver’s world and that distraction (as delicious as it was) was
taking me away from developing Oliver’s world. It kept happening over and over
till finally I determined that Fagin’s
Boy would contain only Oliver’s point-of-view. But I did miss knowing what Jack thought. I
had his verbal and visible reactions (somewhat laconic and mocking) to Oliver’s
predicaments, but that was from the outside; I didn’t know what was going on in
his head.

So then I promised myself that I would write a
two person point-of-view story to follow Fagin’s
Boy. The working title is Oliver and
Jack, and I’m already rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of what
Jack’s point-of-view will be when he comes upon Oliver in a cranky mood, or
when Oliver gets drunk. (And really, Oliver is constantly either cranky or
drunk, it seems, in Fagin’s Boy!)
Plus, I’ll get to write about Oliver from an outsider’s perspective. Oliver is
very beautiful, in my mind, so to have someone else who also thinks that?
Terrific. Oliver can hardly think, “Oh, I’m so handsome!” But Jack can think it
for him and will do so, frequently.

The Invisible Woman by
Claire Tomalin, recently adapted into a major motion picture, puts the life of
the great Victorian novelist in a new historical perspective: Dickens appears to be a darker and
more complex man, far from the 'jolly' character we have perceived over the
years through his novels. As a fan of the prolific British author, have those revelations changed
the way your read his work?

Those
revelations are already known to me, actually. I did a lot of research for this
book, including background information on Dickens. I pretty much watched ever y
BBC show on the subject, till I probably could recite a lot of it by
heart.

And
while I was surprised when I heard about the deeper side of Dickens’ nature, it
was at the same time a relief to know that Dickens wasn’t a paragon of virtue,
that he had his flaws and foibles. It makes him a real person, who struggled,
and made mistakes. I can relate to that more than I can the jolly Victorian
Christmas-god that Dickens is sometimes presented as. So it’s not changed the way I read his work,
it’s reinforced the notion that no one, even Bill Sikes, is all good, or all
bad.

What's in your future?
More historical fiction?

Historical
fiction is my favorite thing to write about. When I was young, I despaired that
I would never be able to wear a bonnet to school and get away with it. I was
never going to be required to write on a slate with a slate pencil to do
arithmetic lessons. I was never going to be asked to bring water in from the
well. In my head, I lived in another age; I live there still. So that’s what I
write about.

My
current project, now that Fagin’s Boy
has been published, is to write the sequel to Fagin’s Boy. Oliver and Jack are still talking to me as well as to each
other, and they won’t be quiet, so I am forced to listen to their complaints
and woes, their desires and their fears.

Jack
hates being out of London, and he’s sure that all that fresh air is what’s
causing the rasp in his breathing. He wants to go home, but he wants to be
where Oliver is, so he’s conflicted. Though, likely, he’ d put it a different
way, such as: “All this fresh air, blast it, it’s given me the consumption –
wait, where you goin’?” Personally I think that the country sky is way too big
for Jack at this point; he’s used to rooflines, chimney pots, church spires
dotting his horizon, along with the constant smudge of coal smoke, and he
rather misses them.

As
for Oliver, he’s lost. He’s so lost, even though he knows which road he is on
and where that road leads. The sky is full of rain and there is no comfort to
be found anywhere. He’s got no job, no respectable lodgings, and, perhaps worst
of all, he’s got mud stains up to his knees and he’s not had a hot meal in
days! He doesn’t complain out loud about
any of these things, but I can see it in his expression, in the tightness of
his mouth, the way his eyes narrow when they look at the world around him. The
way he doesn’t ask Jack to pick pockets so that they can eat, but at the same
time, he doesn’t rebuke Jack for doing it either. The only constant in his life
is Jack at his side, and as Oliver walks, he uses Jack as a touchstone while he
attempts to knit together the pieces that his life has become. Poor Oliver.

This
project has a working title of Oliver and
Jack, even though I’ll probably come up with something that resonates more
with what the book is about.

Just for fun, if you
could be a character in a Dickens' novel, who would you be and why?

Great
question! My mind went first to the twins in Nicholas Nickleby, Charles and Ned Cheeryble. These two were the
kind souls who helped Nicholas out of a bind. The first time I read Nicholas Nickleby, I was shocked and not
convinced that people like the Cheerybles existed; they handed out kindness out
of nowhere for no reason. I doubted them, and I tsked-tsked Dickens’ creation
of them. However, life does contain people like that, who hand out kindness to
strangers.

Another
character that I would like to be is the initial judge in Oliver Twist. He’s
the one who won’t sign the papers that might send Oliver to work for Mr.
Gamfield (the chimney sweep dude). He says about Oliver, “Treat him kindly, he
seems to want it.” Of course no one does treat Oliver kindly, but at least the
idea was there.

Though,
truly, I’d like to be Oliver or Jack. They’re young men in a vibrant and
growing city, they have the world before them. I think it would be fun to have
their adventure. (Though I don’t envy them what’s coming at them in the
sequel!)

Being a writer is not just what I do, it’s who I
am. Even if everything else in the day turns sour, if I have written, then it’s
still a pretty good day.

I decided I wanted to be a writer when my fourth
grade teacher (Mrs. Harr) gave me a good grade on a creative writing story I’d
written. And not only that, she added “I like your ending,” along with a smiley
face. At that point, I was off and running. I’ve been writing and making up
stories ever since.

I live in Colorado. I’ve tried to live elsewhere,
but it’s always too far from my family, so I returned for good some time ago.
Colorado is a brilliant location to live in as it’s not very far from either
coast, and the local international airport is only an hour away.

Right beside my writing desk, I have a green arm
chair and ottoman that I call The Vortex. There are two reasons I call it that.
The first is that it’s always trying to suck me in and sit down and do nothing
but think and read and stare at the sunlight and shadows as they dapple the
walls and ceiling. The second is that once I sit down in the thing, it’s almost
impossible to get up, as The Vortex keeps sucking me in.

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About Me

Mother of two amazing kids, Miss A™ entertainment columnist, avid reader bordering book-fetishism. Books are my childhood friends, my stress-relief therapy, my wings to fly to faraway lands and distant times, my source of knowledge and inspiration. I simply adore them and consume them aplenty. My "book love affair" began in my early teens with the Bronte sisters, Dickens, Austen, Poe, Conrad, and James. My taste in reading was shaped by those masters and still today, when I read fiction, I appreciate the dark tones, the Gothic touches, and the psychological insight typical of those classics.